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1 year agoFlash drives are the modern day floppies. Use them and when the fail, get a new one. Stick with the smaller sizes for the best price per GB.
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Cake day: October 27th, 2023
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WD Red is three lines since 2020.
WD Red are all SMR and available up to 6TB.
WD Red Plus, introduced in 2020, are the original Red and available up to 14TB
WD Red Pro, introduced in 2014, have always been CMR and are available up to 22TB
Multiple copies, multiple locations. All encrypted.
So…break Reddit rules and upload illegal files?
MANTRAS:
NEVER MOVE, ALWAYS COPY!
BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP!
NEVER USE USE WINDOWS EXPLORER TO COPY FILES. USE A ULTILITY LIKE TERACOPY OR RSYNC.
ALWAYS VERIFY YOUR COPY WITH CRC AND GENERATE A HASH. IDEALLY SAVING THAT HASH FOR FUTURE COMPARISON.
r/techsupport
Most likely whatever drive that didn’t pass testing to be sold as full retail.
IMO, no pre-built externals are worth shucking unless they’re significantly cheaper than bare retail drives.
About externals and why I recommend not buying them anymore.
This is from a Q&A with an anonymous industry insider who confirmed what others and I have speculated for years.
Q: Is it true that the drives in externals can be: overstock, overruns, binned (out of spec drives), from cancelled orders.
A: Yes to all of it. Externals are the lowest bins above the [redated] (Edit: binned rives} we sell to third parties. It’s whatever is leftover. They have less warranty because they aren’t expected to last as long.
My notes: The first part is supported by what I posted in this thread, https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/11jmot5/to\_those\_asking\_what\_drive\_is\_inside\_my\_wd/ which has a link to WD’s disclosure about this.
It’s been confirmed by another source that the binned drives, are drives that are Out Of Spec, flashed with special firmware that can’t be updated and is no longer supported by the manufacturer. This is source of SOME of the unbranded drives from certain resellers.
[New edit not in the original thread] The above paragraph is referring to another thread where the OP bought a refurbed internal drive, not an external and it was incorrectly flashed.
Q: Is it true that in a given generation of HDD, when reduced capacities are released at the same time, you can sometimes tell from the model number that it’s the same hardware inside as a full capacity drive” To be used in externals or sold to resellers?
A: Yes, see above. The [redated] (My edit: XX drive size) were reconfigured for 12 and 14TB. The [redacted] went all the way down to 10TB to my knowledge. We just disable specific bad heads in the factory and rewrite the tracks. It’s an automated process obviously, but we can internally look up all that history on any serial number.
This is from the link about WD externals referred to above
To those asking “What drive is inside my WD external?”. From WD…
Drive Type Inside of a WD External Drive Enclosure
The drive inside of a Western Digital enclosure may vary depending on application.
• Depending on model, the internal drive included an external enclosure could have a SATA or native USB interface.
• We can only guarantee drive capacity.
We cannot guarantee a particular internal drive model, data interface, rotational speed, power consumption, transfer speed or cache size included in the external hard drive enclosure.
• We can only guarantee a Western Digital Drive.
We cannot guarantee a particular enclosure will have a WD colored drive inside.
• Dismantling any single-drive external enclosure to obtain this information will void the warranty of the hard drive.
Please refer to the Western Digital Warranty Policy.
• Interface and cache of the drives inside the external enclosure does not affect the performance or the data transfer rate of the external drive unit.
IMO, pointless as a potential white paper without much stricter controls than two drives and small media samples. May be enough for a undergraduate thesis, but hardly anything that would be worth any type of scrutiny or scientific value.
Verbatim blank media has been wholly owned my CMC Magnetics since 2019 and continues to make AZO media using Verbatim’s proprietary formula and techniques. However, as I posted above, even before Verbatim was bought, they sold non-AZO disks under their Life Series name.
And yes, blank media degrades from the moment they’re manufactured.
Max UHD disc speed is 128Mb/s / 16MB/s. Hard drives read at up to ~150-200MB/s, so far from being a limiting factor. Even the slowest 5400 RPM hard drive is still fast enough to play any 4K video.
Even SMR hard drives which do slow down as you full up the drive and/or rewrite files, are fine as the the read speed is the same as CMR drives.
Your issues with crashes and stutters is caused by something else other than the hard drive.
Note that this is for video playback. If you’re writing or editing video, then an SSD makes a difference.
Storage takes space and costs money!
Lesson learned. 3-2-1 backup. 2 backups a the minimum. Cloud is just someone else’s computer and anything can happen.
To those complaining about Verbatim discs, understand that for decades, disc manufacturers have been selling discs from other makers under their brand name and virtually all first tier disc manufacturers around the world, notably Japan, Singapore, India, UAE have closed. CMC Magnetics used only manufacture 2nd & 3rd tier discs until they completely bought out Verbatim and Taiyo-Yuden, including their proprietary formulas.
What’s always been the measure of quality is the media code https://www.videohelp.com/dvdmediaform.php?dvdinfo=1#dvdinfo which you can then cross reference in this list: https://www.videohelp.com/dvdmedia
lordsmurf at digitalfaq.com gave a list of 1st tier blank DVDs that’s still relevant today since only Verbatim (Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation) and Taiyo-Yuden are the only brands/formulas in use today. https://www.digitalfaq.com/reviews/dvd-media.htm
Name brands like Sony, TDK and Maxell are still on the market today, but the media code will show the discs are 2nd or 3rd tier inferior products.
The reason for the quality decline in blank DVDs is that like CDs, the price bottomed out and 1st tier media could no longer be sold at as premium. The good news is you can still get Verbatim AZO discs if you shop carefully and read the package label, lookin for the AZO name and logo. Taiyo-Yuden discs are also still available at a premium.
Note that the media code can be faked, so be sure to buy from a known, reputable seller where you can return your unused discs if they’re bad.
WD Blue 6TB is SMR. There are no 8TB+ WD SMR drives in any line. And there are no 10TB+ SMR drives in any Seagate line. Unsure about Toshiba.
https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/50697/related/1
https://www.seagate.com/products/cmr-smr-list/
https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/ap-en/company/news/news-topics/2020/04/storage-20200428-1.html
For 2.5" drives, with the exception of a few Toshiba and specialized Seagate Exos E, all >500GB are SMR.
Putting aside the conspiracy theory that SMR could be submarined in to drives again, all WD Red Plus, Red Pro, Gold and Ultrastars are CMR. Red is all SMR and available up to 6TB and 8TB WD Blue (the max size) is CMR.
Whatever you use, be sure to a CRC and generate a HASH (and ideally save it for future reference) to ensure you copies are bit for bit accurate. This is especially critical for audio files where a split second glitch will haunt you forever!
Definitely check SMART, but don’t post it here per Rule #9. Post at r/techsupport
9. r/techsupport exists.
r/Datahoarder is not a sub for tech support,
r/techsupport is for posts which could have been a google search, e.g. a post with CrystalDiskInfo screenshots with the title “is my drive ok?”. Literally every question about SMART status*. Audio recordings of “is this click noise normal?” More technical questions are allowed, e.g. “what is the optimal ZFS configuration of a 24 disk array” or “how else can i automate the archiving of this [thing]”*
I keep all special features except regular trailers. I say regular trailers because some may contain scenes or outakes that are only available there.
I’ve also found that sometimes the extras on Blu-Ray releases are different. At least on the Asian releases I hoard.
Ideally you would have generated and saved a HASH before you copied your files as a control. Otherwise, it’s just a probability game. If the HASH on copy 1&2 match, but doesn’t match 3, then the probability is 1&2 are correct. If all three don’t match, you toss a coin.
If you’re on Windows, I recommend using Teracopy for all your file copying (always copy, never move!) and set verify on, which will perform a CRC and generate a HASH which you can then save. You can also use it to Test your files after the fact and generate a HASH.